59 pages • 1 hour read
Robert M. PirsigZen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance
Nonfiction | Book | Adult | Published in 1974A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Chapters 14-15Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Part II
Chapter 14 Summary
The group arrives in Bozeman, and though the narrator remembers his surroundings, it all feels alien to him. Driving into the mountains, the group meets Robert and Gennie DeWeese, who are having a get together with friends from the university. The home is impressive, and makes the group feel relaxed. Though wanting to reconnect, the narrator is unable to connect with the others and tunes out their conversation. John jokes that the narrator must have been “crazy” to leave, which angers Robert, who is unaware that the Sutherlands might not know about his past, but the narrator brushes it off. The “stickiness” between John and Robert is due to their different conceptions of who the narrator is.
The group dines with the DeWeeses, and more guests arrive after dinner. As the narrator is a technical writer, Robert brings out his instructions for a barbeque he has been having trouble putting together, hoping that the narrator might find some flaw in the instructions. This act leads the narrator to comment on having “peace of mind” for bicycle assembly, referring to instructions he saved from a Japanese manual. The narrator explains that peace of mind is required for mechanical work because the aim is to assemble a machine that satisfies the builder. Otherwise, the object at hand cannot be built. Like a true craftsman, the work is not held to a narrow set of instructions. The act of building is more closely aligned to making art. The narrator surprises everyone when he says that the barbeque assembly is a form of sculpting.
Chris finds a way to look at the instructions with the illustrations next to the text, dumbfounding the narrator. After the other guests finally leave and Chris and the Sutherlands go to bed, the narrator talks with the DeWeeses and explains his theory further. He tells them that he had been thinking about these things before, but not all of the ideas and not to this extent.
The narrator then talks about how his belief system about reason is founded upon rhetoricians like Phaedrus, an ancient Greek figure. Phaedrus is known from Plato’s Socratic dialogue, and was there when reason itself was invented. When reason is explored as the narrator is exploring it, Phaedrus’ ghost reappears. It is now early in the morning. The DeWeeses recommend he write all his thoughts down, like a treatise on reason. After finding out the best place to go camping with Chris, the narrator finally goes to bed.
Chapter 15 Summary
The group rides to an old mining town and stay together in Bozeman for two more days, then John and Sylvia return home. Sylvia is worried about the narrator and Chris. When the narrator and Chris must wait for the motorcycle to be repaired, they walk the streets, remembering places from their past, and end up at the college where Phaedrus taught. They enter the building, which brings back memories of Phaedrus for the narrator, but Chris becomes uncomfortable and runs out. The narrator continues, and walks into Phaedrus’s old classroom.
A woman enters the classroom and recognizes the narrator as Phaedrus. She is shocked and sits down at a chair. She treats the narrator reverently and, on finding that he no longer teaches, is shocked. She almost lets the word “crazy” slip her lips in response to his not teaching, but stops herself, indicating that she knows what happened to him. The meeting between the two is extremely uncomfortable.
On his way out, the narrator sees a picture that Phaedrus bought and realizes he has found Phaedrus’s old office. In the room, he remembers all the ideas he had been working on, the philosophic breakthroughs he was tangling with. He also remembers a coworker who constantly walked past him and asked if he was teaching Quality to his students. Though he had said yes, her remarks unnerved Phaedrus, so much so that he began exploring what Quality is and how it relates to teaching writing to students. As the method for teaching was too prescriptive, and as he was in no condition to teach after staying up too early thinking about Quality, he asked the students to write about Quality. Realizing that the essay was upsetting to students, Phaedrus realized that they must have been having the same problem as he was in defining Quality. This predicament continues to question how one can assign Quality to something by explicitly labeling it as bad or good, but not be able to define Quality itself.
Chapters 14-15 Analysis
The narrator introduces the concept of having “peace of mind” while working. This is an integral component to understanding the nature of awareness. When a worker has peace of mind, he/she is one with the work, like a craftsman who takes pride in what is produced. Peace of mind stops the automated sense of production, placing a sense of pride and quality within the worker and the work. To instill this peace of mind into people on a large scale, reason itself must be expanded. With such narrow views as classic and romantic, people will not be able to fully see the world.
Quality becomes the topic that occupies Phaedrus’ thoughts. A trip to his old campus results in the narrator remembering Phaedrus’s struggle with the concept, and how, when he placed the concept in the care of his students, they, too, were at a loss to describe Quality. This supported the fact that everyone agrees in the concept of Quality but that no one knows how to define it. In other words, a broader understanding or reason needed to take place on a large scale to better understand this concept of Quality.
